2013 Draft Lottery Running Diary (with Pictures!)

Oh NBA draft lottery, we’ve come so far since David Stern brazenly grabbed the envelope with the folded corner and handed Patrick Ewing to the Knicks. The whole process has grown so much that the selection process happens off-screen now, so we can be TOTALLY sure a team doesn’t get a #1 pick because Dan Gilbert was owed one or Tom Benson just took the Hornets off the league’s hands. Things like that would NEVER happen at the draft lottery!

We here at No Regard find lots of value in the more trivial NBA happenings, and since televised corporate meetings where you kinda feel like something’s off are kinda my thing, I DVR’d the draft lottery just to watch Arrested Development on Netflix and catch the #1 pick later or maybe just look on Twitter write a running diary. There are white guys AND more white guys! I hope you like pictures of someone else's TV. 

 Here we go:

 :00 – looks like I missed the opening sequence, if there was one. Here’s Chad Ford sitting at a table next to some other guy talking about Nerlens Noel. A graphic of the draft rules comes on the screen and the rosters of the league’s crappiest teams scroll across the bottom.

 The camera turns to Heather Cox standing in a room full of fresh NBA gear. “Nice!” you probably just thought to yourself. “That stuff must be worth a fortune!” Well, you’re wrong. Just look at this crap.

 I’d pay like 8 bucks for the contents of that room.

 :01 - Cox tells us she’s in the Good Morning America studios where the lottery itself actually happened. Apparently somewhere there is a locked room full of team executives and exactly four media members plus “members of the accounting firm Ernst & Young” (because they DEFINITELY didn’t rig it this year). They don’t have phones or internet in there, just David Stern telling them exactly what will happen to their families if they go anywhere near Twitter in the next half-hour. Then Cox shows us the ball picking device and some charts with numbers.

In case you care, the Magic have the best chance of winning because the Dwight Howard trade turned out so well for them.

 :03 Ford starts telling us about a bunch of guys we didn’t bother watching in college this year and says maybe Ben McLemore can be the #1 pick (I'm disregarding this, it's Nerlens' night). Heather Cox re-appears and talks to Anthony Bennett from UNLV, who has his arm in a sling. Along with Nerlens Noel’s torn ACL, this may be the gimpiest draft in a while.

:05 – I still haven’t figured out who the co-host talking to Chad Ford is. Ford is talking about guys who might get picked 5-10.  They won’t be heard from until the vastly underrated Rising Stars Challenge where they’ll take turns picking on Brandon Knight.

:08 – We’re suddenly transported to the Simmons/Jalen Rose/Magic Johnson/Mike Wilbon Patronizing Everyone pregame show. Simmons runs through his Karma Power Rankings. [5. Philly 4. Orlando 3. Wizards 2. Kings (no) 1. Pistons.] That was even more pointless than this blog post. Simmons predicts a Kings lottery win, which is the consensus suspicion among NBA conspiracy theorists.

:11 – The guy who runs NBA security just escorted some accountant to the podium with the draft results. They are the only two people in the room who already know the results.

This is so white. We’re almost halfway through and have already gotten two commercial breaks, a cut-away to the Spurs-Griz pregame show, a room full of worthless gear and several people taking their jobs way too seriously. We haven’t met any team representatives yet and don’t know about any of the picks.

:14 - Time for a vignette of possible lottery picks! Ten years ago I watched this very show to find out where LeBron, Darko, Wade, Melo and Bosh might go. Today, I barely know who the guys in this video are.

:15 – Meet the team reps!

Jazz: old white guy

Mavericks: middle-aged white guy

Raptors: middle-aged white guy

Sixers: middle-aged white guy

Blazers: Damian Lillard!

Timberwolves: Kevin Love! He brought a Ricky Rubio bobblehead, doesn’t say a word, is so far beyond this crap.

Wizards: Bradley Beal!

Pistons: Andre Drummond!

Kings: Keith Smart (DeMarcus hasn’t fired him yet!)

Pelicans: Monty Williams lies to us about how excited he was to have Austin Rivers on his team. Also everyone is officially calling them the Pelicans now. I want them to win this so we can have Nerlens in Nawlins.

Suns: old white guy

Cavs: Dan Gilbert’s kid in a bow tie and holy crap his voice has dropped. Also he’s FURIOUS to be at the lottery again.

Bobcats: a man named Fred Whitfield who is shockingly NOT white. If I told you to speak to a Charlotte businessman named Fred Whitfield and released you into this room, you’d take at least 7 guesses before picking this guy.

Magic: old white guy

That’s four players, two coaches, seven non-Kevin Love white guys of varying ages and one Fred Whitfield.

Side note: Dan Gilbert is currently 2/3 of the way to actually becoming Willy Wonka. 

:18 – It’s Adam Silver time! I guess Stern has some reporter’s blood all over his suit and didn’t bring a change of clothes. Picks 9-14 go in the order they were slotted to go, with the Raptors losing their pick to the Thunder, which is somehow related to the James Harden trade.  

:20 – The Pistons get the 8^th pick, which means the Wizards get to squander a top 3 pick this year! They show Bradley Beal, who has not yet processed this information.

:21 – The Bobcats get the 4^th pick despite having the 2^nd best odds to win the lottery. Whitfield looks pissed.

That leaves the Wiz, Cavs and Magic. The camera cuts to Nerlens Noel, who must be begging for the Wizards to win this right now, the Magic are no fun and Cleveland is in Cleveland.

:24 Chad Ford promises there will be actual basketball on after this. Bradley Beal, Dan Gilbert’s kid and this guy are waiting to see the #1 pick.

He looks fun.

The Wiz get the #3 pick. Beal does not care at all.

:25 – Magic get the #2 pick and Dan Gilbert’s kid finally acts like a kid with a solid fist-pump. Cox interviews Dan Gilbert, who promptly makes a joke about keeping his kid confined to his room for six weeks for not winning the draft lottery last year (he's probably not joking). There is a palpable sense that the Magic guy wants to punch both Gilberts in the face and that all the players were ready to go to 1OAK with JR Smith an hour ago.

:27 – The guy who isn’t Chad Ford interviews Nerlens, who mumbles through the whole thing. He’s not looking forward to Cleveland.

:28 – Turns out Chad Ford was Jay Bilas the whole time. I still haven’t figured out the co-host’s name. Every single team rep has already bounced.

:29 – Since nobody is left in the room, they give us this fantastic picture of what the creepiest rich people in Cleveland look like. Note the guys sitting on either side of Dan Gilbert. 

There's a 100% chance they have a basement full of Oompa Loompa's.

  

That’s enough of this. Don't worry, Nerlens. That really dumb sound you hear is everyone in Cleveland assuming this will get LeBron to come back. Also, Kyrie looks really fun to play with, so there's that.

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Bethlehem Shoals at GQ's Balls Out Blog: Shoals' work at his GQ-housed playoff blog has been great all the way around, and is the current URL at which to find his best work and visit daily, but this conversation with David Roth (contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Awl) is particularly strong. From their digression about Chris Webber's color commentary:

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Bill Simmons: Despite the monstrous word count and tired references to "The Real World" that have come to define Simmons' writing, this new joint on small market teams—specifically the Kings—is a pretty fair and restrained look at the borderline crisis the NBA is facing. Worth a skim. He also makes a Thelma & Louise reference, which was shocking, because I always thought the only movies Simmons had ever seen were Rounders, Boogie Nights, Shawshank Redemption, Top Gun and Cocktail (the last of which he does reference here). The over/under on how many movies he's seen has to be 12. (I love using Simmons gimmicks when writing about him.)